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Today's web marketers face a difficult decision: Do they stick with the classic link-building and keyword-marketing techniques they know have worked in the past, or do they opt to spend time on the broader realm of content marketing?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the reasons you might choose one path over the other.

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I want to address a dilemma that a lot of SEOs and a lot of marketers face and that is sort of choice between what should I be doing to move the needle on my search traffic? Should I be doing kind of classic SEO, the keyword targeting plus link building, which moves the needle? Or should I be thinking more broadly in terms of kind of a full content marketing spectrum? I'll describe these two, and I'll talk about why it's so tough for these guys who are at this fork in the road.

So, in link building land, we research some keywords to target. We know we want to go after those. Maybe we've already been assigned them by our boss or our team or our client if we're doing consulting. Then we try and go out and find potential opportunities to earn links. Maybe we do a little bit of comparative analysis. We'll run the Keyword Difficulty tool and look at how people who are ranking for that keyword have done in terms of link metrics versus how we're doing, and maybe we'll do a little bit of on-page optimization as well. But mostly it's around this link opportunity stuff.

I think a lot of folks in the classic SEO world do this, even today, and it does work. They go out and get those links. Maybe they do outreach, find competitive links, find open link opportunities around the Web, whatever it is that can move the needle on the links. But it's really about that push-for-direct outreach and direct link building, not kind of passively sitting back and letting the links hopefully roll in.

Then you move up in the rankings. Slowly, but steadily, you will move up because links are still a big portion of the search engines' algorithms, Google and Bing both. Over time, if you are moving the needle on links more than your competition, chances are good that you will be able to outrank them, assuming you are doing other things right.

On the flip side is the content marketing world. In content marketing land, this is a very, very different approach. We kind of take the broad view at the beginning of: Who is the audience that I want to reach? Who are all the people in that audience group? Then, what do they use? What channels do they use to discover content, to share things, to influence one another and to be influenced, and to discover new stuff, like the products, services, mission that I'm trying to fulfill or that I'm trying to sell them?

That could be things like Twitter and Facebook. It could be blogs that they read. It might be influencers that they follow on social networks or through email channels or whatever it is. Obviously, it's going to be a lot of Google searches. Google is still quite a bit of the Web's search traffic. Maybe it's YouTube, people using video to find these things.

Then, I'm going to take from this audience and where they are and what they're doing. I want to create content that will appeal to my target audience, the people I'm directly trying to reach and to their influencers. That might be a webinar, a video, a blog, a free tool, whatever it is.

Now I'm going to go out and do influencer outreach. I'm going to try and do good, smart keyword targeting on Google. I'm going to promote my stuff on social. I'm going to reach out to my community, maybe through email or directly.

Then, I'm going to hope to get the results of a little bit of increased traffic. I'm going to hopefully grow my community. If I'm producing valuable content stuff, more people will follow my social accounts, more people subscribe to my email, more people will be personalized by the connections that they've got to me through Google, so that their Google search results will be biased in my favor. I'll move up a little in SEO because my domain authority hopefully grows some and I get a few links and referring traffic.

Then, I rinse and repeat this model over and over until I feel like, hey, now I need to go target new audiences, and I'm going to repeat this process all over again.

The challenge here is that . . . and I've seen this discussion happening in the SEO world and, in fact, I think it's a very fair discussion to have. There are folks who are kind of in link building land who say, "This works for me; this doesn't work for me." You hear all sorts of reasons why it doesn't work for them. Maybe it's who their client or who their team or what their product is or who they're trying to reach. They say, "Well, they're just not interested. They don't do a lot of content consumption. They're not influenced by social channels and by YouTube and by blogs and by industry news or trade shows and events, or whatever these things are that I can use to amplify my content. I'm not getting value from this, and so I'm going to stick to this. I get some links. I move up in the rankings. I get more visits for the key terms I'm going after. That turns into conversions. This is what I'm after."

Actually, I think it's okay. I know that in the past many folks have kind of assumed that oh, well Rand is really against this, or Moz is really against this world. But that's not actually the case. If this is working for you, I don't have a problem with it.

What I have a problem with is when people don't think holistically and don't make the conscious choice and simply stick to what they have been doing because they've seen it work in the past. Even if it is not working as well or if it keeps getting harder or if something like Penguin comes along and penalizes a bunch of the tactics that you were using to get those links, you just stay on the treadmill. That's where I think things get really dangerous, and I've got some ideas here about how you can choose.

One of the things that I think you should be conscientious about is goals and metrics. Are your goals tied to broad marketing efforts? Are we trying to get lots of people aware of our brand, aware of our product? Are we trying to do some positioning? Are we trying to get people to change their minds about how they solve a problem and come over to our world? Or is our metric just are we ranking well? Are we getting traffic directly from Google for the rankings, for the keywords that we care about, and are we converting them? If that's your whole goal and metric, maybe link building land is the right way to go. Maybe this is a little bit broad.

Secondary, are you thinking long term or short term?

In the long term, one of the things that I do worry about is a lot of these tactics and a lot of Google's algorithm has been getting more and more focused on things that are outside of just how many linking root domains do you have, and does the anchor text include your keywords, and is it pointing to a page that you're targeting?

They're getting a lot smarter. They're using a ton more signals than they were just three or four years ago. They're doing a lot more rich data options, rich snippets, different types of results. The classic 10 blue links, I think Dr. Pete found that was like 15% of search results are ten blue links and that's it. That's not a lot of opportunity. Even if you are moving up, boy, you've got to be pretty hopeful that they stick with this model and that the algorithm doesn't change too much and that links continue to be a huge powering force and that nothing else overtakes those.

Multi-channel versus single. If search, in particular search rankings on primary keyword targeted phrases, are really the only channel that's producing any kind of results and you don't even see that in a multi-channel attribution, that social or that content or email or referring links or something else, long tail searches or whatever, are having a positive influence, then link building land looks a little more attractive and content marketing land doesn't.

Finally, if the breadth versus depth of your skill set, your team, your SEO, your web marketing team is really around, "Hey, we're good at this. You know, we haven't quite figured out this stuff yet. We don't have the people, the staff, the resources, the time, the energy, the buy-in from management to do these things."

Well then, I understand going after link building land. I think that what's important is that we have a conscious conversation and we understand the dichotomy and the different reasons we might choose one of these paths, not that we always pick one or we always pick the other.

In fact, there might be times when you are in content marketing land and you're right here in and doing some SEO and you really move over to doing this cycle a little bit continuously because that is the focus of your efforts right now. It could be that you're over here and you do some analysis. Maybe you're doing your analysis around your keyword targeting and you say, "Boy, we've got good links to our page, but our domain authority just doesn't help us. We need a broader set of influencers and of links and of people using our stuff. We really need to boost our overall domain and brand awareness. Maybe we want to get into content marketing land for a little while.

So, this choice is certainly up to you. I'm sure there will be a great discussion in the comments, and I look forward to that. Thanks for joining me. Take care.

189 Comments

We moved over to content marketing and the issue we find is that it takes a long time to get your roi out, and SEO link building has conditioned people expecting quick results. I think it will take some time for clients to understand this. And for the small business who want to see a roi quick, due to limited budget its a bit out of reach

Agree entirely with the difficulty of rolling out a content marketing strategy for small business clients who want results yesterday. Been there, done that, not pretty. Fortunately, I'm now in a position where I can be more selective about choosing clients and managing expectations. But see my comments below.

For small businesses focusing on local visibility, sharing (marketing) their content via blogs, Google+ and Facebook and attracting links doesn't require mega-bucks, but it does require effort and this is where education is required.

And I've personally witnessed fantastic results!

Why not train them on how to engage with their target market with a goal of being the go-to authority in their field? If their niche is local, with our help, they should absolutely nail it..

When clients fully embrace the concept of creating content to help their audience (over multiple platforms), amazing things happen and "content" is linked to.

We need to get away from "building" links and focus on solving problems with answers (content) that people link to (and share), because it's helpful.

What type of content can a small business provide?

1) Case studies (written and videos) - they helped X achieve Y and we can help you do the same too

Tony - totally agree and I'd add that for small businesses, just a single piece of content or a couple every year or two can be all you need to do extraordinary things on the web. The product itself is always a starting point in local - great products/service/people earn great reviews which get great coverage and amplification, but a little dose of unique web content goes a long way.

Very pertinent discussion. Thanks for bringing it forth. This is the exact transition that we are currently going through, and I have a client side perspective as the digital marketing leader of a large B2B firm.

To Rand's point above, a few content pieces repurposed in all possible formats and distributed via multiple channels work well. You don't need thousands of content pieces. Secondly, we are transitioning to a more hybrid approach where traditional link building will gradually become a secondary tactic giving way to content marketing as primary. We've also made SEO centre stage for all content generated across the company.

Embracing 'transition' is the key to the evolving nature of our industry - and I applaud you and your company for tackling it head-on :)

PR is so closely related to SEO and web marketers could do far worse than learning all they can about the psychology behind it.

When offline PR is entwined with online marketing, boom!

Think of online PR as creating useful content (new or re-purposed) that is authoritative, and link acquisition as one natural outcome (not the only).

With this mindset, the emphasis is on helping / solving problems first (content, online / offline events etc) then sharing the expertise online (giving).

With Google's Knowledge Graph and Semantic Search gaining traction, online footprints, social sharing and becoming a subject authority are the areas to focus on. And online / offline PR should be viewed as fundamental to this.

One or two good pieces of a content a year? HVAC in Austin Texas will eat you alive if this is your game-plan for SEO.

Link Building Land and Content Marketing Land are a Venn Diagram, They overlap and share boundaries. If you really get to know your industry and client, then you can make a good determination as to where they fit in with this diagram.

Content marketing is ABSOLUTELY the way to go in some industries, some industries are actually viral and people will link. For small and local business, HVAC services, it is very difficult to gain natural links.

This is not just a problem for small business. Expanding to content-based approaches can threaten the very corporate communications culture of large enterprise. The CMO and PR departments can start to wonder if the job of communicating brand value is being taken away from them. I've seen active resistance to content marketing programs in some cases.

Couldn't have said it better, Scott. We run into this frequently with our clients here at Distilled. I think Tony hit the nail on the head by figuring out how to get these teams cooperating and invested in the transition together. It's a long, and rocky road, but in the end it's all about internal education and making content marketing a part of the culture.

Have the same opinion completely by means of the complexity of continuing out a content marketing plan for small industry. The choice of Content marketing is matter; if we look forward to that then it receives an extensive moment to acquire your output.

Admirable presentation, thanks for giving out this. Great encouragement and direction on how to build content into core strong point.

Of-course Content Marketing is the long term investment. For small business want quick results getting hooked with Link building strategy is safe. choice is really depends upon the situation and time frame.

@David Konigsberg, This is SO true. We hear every day how potential clients need results within X (ridiculously short) amount of time. In addition, many ask "How many links comes in an average SEO campaign/package?"

With content marketing based "holistic" SEO strategies, it's not that easy. Link "building" has indeed been an addictive method for much of the industry, one that's put us all in a bit of a tough place moving forward, considering the expectations of many potential and some existing SEO clients.

Something that many SEOs, even myself at times, are guilty of is not understanding that posting content for the sake of having content is NOT what the USER wants. We're working to combat this notion with strong keyword research and helping our clients (and ourselves) develop content strategies that are targeted at providing information and media that users are looking for. For us, this is the long-term link building strategy that I believe will eventually prove most effective.

We all need to take a step back, breathe, and hunker down for the content marketing ride, because it seems to be the best long-term/future-proof SEO strategy for now... My opinion of course.

As just about everyone has said, both methods work. And both methods should be part of your strategy in most cases.

As a former TV producer and news exec and magazine editor, my own background is on the content side. I've gotten pretty good at link building, too. The link building outreach part draws on alliance building skills I developed when I worked in non-profits. This often happens at a senior level. I find it puzzling that people still try to do this on a webmaster to webmaster level.

But I sometimes have to call in a technical SEO for hardcore tech issues. I can diagnose these, but not always fix them on my own.
My point is that we have to make sure we are in a position to offer our clients the best possible solutions for their situations -- and not just do what comes naturally because of our own backgrounds.

For one client, I've written a series of employee profiles that reinforces the idea of delivering exceptional customer service (including holidays and weekends) and stresses their community involvement. Another client has more internal resources. I have a weekly editorial meeting with two employees (one is the communications coordinator, another is a biz dev person who went to journalism school.) We track progress on a spreadsheet. Meanwhile, conventional link-building continues.

Both these clients are B2B, so social media plays a relatively small role. But for other clients in the passion-driven health and fitness fields, social media is huge.

So I think we need to think of ourselves as portfolio managers who adjust methods and weightings according to requirements. But that means we have to be flexible and competent in all methods.

I think that's a very smart approach. My apologies if the video came off as suggesting that you must always choose one path or the other - that's certainly not the case, and a wise marketer should apply the right tactic to the situation (which may vary depending on a lot of inputs).

@randfish- I must admit that there is a dilemma among SEO's. Things are changing rapidly and so your strategy should also change. But let's see things from an Internet Marketing Agency perspective. For an example: Every month you devise a link building plan and decide to build 100 links for your client. At the end of the month you prepare link building performance report, which helped to either keep your rankings stable or move up. In this case client will pay me for the 100 links which I have built.

Now if I decide to go with Content Marketing for the same client (I strongly believe we should go for it). How will I create a content plan that will be operational and executable? Also what and how are we going to report the effectiveness of this strategy that will help to move the needle? And most important part will client pay me the same amount that he used to pay for 100 links comparing the amount of links we are going build (given he cares about only ROI)?

Hello.The approaches are good but depend on the current situation of the website. If want to influence the business and traffic need to optimize using social channel, but if there has some idle situation can be perform SEO activities.

Most of the webmasters are little bit confuse over SEO link building and content marketing strategies what to do and how to do, because the off page activities has almostdead. So what things are remaining to perform on the websites?

I think I can't be call out as a Content Marketing hater, but - sincerely - I think that Link Building vs. Content Marketing is more a "Sex of the Angels" discussion. In fact, IMHO, the first doesn't deny the existence of the other and vice versa. All the contrary, the first and the second cannot but take advantage one of the other and, doing so, enhancing their effectiveness. Using a swift tagline: When it comes to Link Building and Content Marketing, 1 + 1 = 3 not 2.

Let me explain myself better before you all start thumbing me down :D.

In my opinion real link building (or link earning or what else you like to call the act of acquiring links naturally) right now is part, as Content Marketing, of a wider Inbound Strategy.

In this strategy, in order to generate content or, better, in order to exist as an online Entity, you must know your audience. My post about Brand Storytelling was all about this concept.

Traditional SEO is of great help in this phase, because all the keywords/queries researches typically of SEO, can be used (within other things) also in order to understand the language and slang of the audience, seasonality of interests, her likes and dislikes, hence helping in crafting the Content Marketing editorial planning.

SEO as a tool, then, but also Content Marketing as a tool of a bigger and omni-comprehrensive Inbound Strategy.

In this vision, Link Building enters as a tool too, a facet of the natural promotion of the great content that must be done, without with... well, we and our moms and friends only will enjoy that great content.

Link Building, right now, for me means especially - if not only - outreach. And real link builders are that: kings of outreach.

So, to conclude, Link Building is a friendly tactic for Content Marketers, not an enemy.

Said that, I agree that basing your promoting efforts just to classic link building, even if it works great, isn't the ideal for creating a long lasting Brand, or a Brand perception that will be able to resist to the Google shakes, simply because it won't depend just by Google.

I love that you tackled this topic. This is an ongoing battle I witness each day, online and with clients. My issue, which you address, is there appears to be a lot of close-mindedeness on both sides. Many link builders appear to disavow the import of content marketing, seeing it as having a low return on investment. After all, it is about links, right? I see their point, especially when every prospect I talk to wants content so they can get links.

I don't have a problem with this camp. It's the content marketers, of which I am one, I now take issue with as a whole.

It appears that we have now puffed our collective chests out, proud to have our chance in the sunshine, happy that link building has lost some of the luster it once enjoyed. This is shortsighted and downright dumb in my opinion.

Content marketers are ruining a great opportunity to work with SEOs and learn valuable lessons that can be beneficial in their discipline. We need their input, in my opinion. My biggest gripe, however, is content marketers, to a large extent, are missing the boat by not understanding that it takes more than just content to be successful. Content strategy, woefully lacking in innumerable instances, must begin the process.

This came up on a Facebook group I frequent. Some guy said he'd value content marketing (or simply copywriting, i.e. blog post creation without any SEO inclusion) over SEO. Maybe I'm biased, but I was shocked. Why not have both? Besides, surely SEO'ed content is better than well-written content that'll never be found? Like you say, I think a lot of SEOs are switched on about content, but not necessarily vice versa...

Ronell - I haven't seen exactly the experience you're describing (probably because so many of my content marketing world connections have a mostly-SEO background), but I can certainly see why it's a problem. There needs to be mutual respect and understanding across the tactical and marketing practice spectrums or else we'll all make bad decisions based on ignorant biases.

Here's to learning more about what everyone in the marketing world does!

Totally right Ronell, couldn't have said it better. And I'm sure you've seen it Rand...every "SEO is dead" post and every response. Collectively people have unfortunately made a pretty good case against all online marketing...

I can see a clear division between the two, but as mentioned, I believe a combination of the two to be more successful. Like @nyagoslav said, "why should one choose between two potentially potent strategies when they could use both?"

I didn't mean to suggest you should only or always choose one - just wanted to highlight the opportunities, uniqueness, and mindsets between them. I certainly hope folks consider applying whatever technique makes the most sense (for example, in many cases when great content has already been done, outreach and amplification are the most value-adding elements).

Rand. I think it is pretty clear you said do both, and you have no problem with doing one, the other or both just don't get stuck in a rut. If people don't get that then I'd ask why they are doing SEO at all.

Hi Rand, thanks for clarifying a couple times. I am a big fan of Moz tools (especially for link building), and your content leadership. For many who viewed the video, the confusion started with the following:

On Google+, the lead was - "its old school vs. new school"

In the video, "there's a fork in the road" and concludes "the choice is certainly up to you"

Many of your viewers take the view that it is a balancing decision. Moz may not need to do link building anymore. You've already built a vast social community and there's tons of content others can link to.

Many of my clients are early stage, venture-backed consumer web companies with less than 30k visitors a month. We pursue guest blogging with relevant sites serving much larger audiences to leverage. We are also balancing that effort with content marketing. Otherwise the links will lead to a ghost town. As you have clarified in the comments, it's not an either or decision - it's integrated.

I keep finding myself asking the same question, "why not both?" then I keep forgetting the answer, "time, money, manpower." I think the real problem is that many people might think they can only do one or the other before they even realize that their is an opportunity cost for doing either. But in the end, I believe the answer is still to do both, if you can.

As I noted above - there's no reason to go exclusively with one or the other all the time, and that wasn't my intent with the video. I think it's excellent to have a toolbox you can apply to marketing challenges and pick the right tool for the right one.

There definitely has to be a balance of both strategies. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. However, like mentioned by @Ronando, this will vary across SEO's due to resources ("time, money, manpower").

I've been stuck between both methods in my role as my company's sole in-house content person. We've had success with both; however I agree with most posters that in order to do real content marketing you need the resources to do so. I've come to the realization that there really isn't enough time in the day for one person to research link opportunities, create content, maintain social relationships, and promote the content. I WANT to do content marketing, but in order to do it well, I'm going to need some help. So until I get it, I think I'll be spending most of my time in Link Building Land.

I know from my experience that in many cases only link building is not working and can never be. But in some cases, link building is working great. It all depends on type of competition you are facing. When we approach this issue holistically, content marketing has more value. But for sites targeting traffic from a tiny location where your competitors do not have any social influence and are not doing content marketing, I think link building is showing great result. In that case why anyone would go for content marketing. In such cases, obviously targeting time is very limited. So, many SEOs do not have other options than going for link building only. Please guide what they should do in such condition.

I think in some cases - link building is not only working - it is the fastest and cheapest way - that must be a reason for the decision - what would take how long - building an active community is a timeheavy job.

Remember when all those scientisit couldn't agree on what the M theory was (string theroy?). And then they figured out they were all looking at the problem from different perspectives, but it did have one answer.

That's how I view this ongoing discussion. It's all the same stuff viewed from different angles. For me, Content marketing is link building in a different form. Link building, is content marketing in a micro form.

The issue comes when we start trying to label it. SEO? Digital Marketing?

Content Marketing Land gives you less risk and more channels to generate visits to your website, and also helps your SEO efforts of linkbuilding, so to me Content Marketing Land includes Link Building Land, and make it works better your SEO campaign

In my so humble opinion, TACTICS as your strategy is NOT sustainable. Strategy, and a holistic approach, and staying organic and relevant, is sustainable via content marketing. I am NOT saying tactics are bad. You MUST keyword opitimize your content, but it doesn't stop there. Great content distributed to relevant communities made up of your target audience, and working at it every day (I call it HUSTLE) is where it's at!

After being a lurker for many years, I created a Moz account just to comment on this Whiteboard Friday. Great vid, btw.

I don't understand why you wouldn't do both. It seems like common sense to do both... Create unique, quality content *AND* build links to said content at the same time. Why put all of your eggs in one basket?

I think there is no doubt that both methods work here but I have some questions for everyone:

Rather than short term vs long term, shouldn't it only be long term and sustainable? I mean, yes link building works but many of us have seen the results of this when it goes too far and results in penalties etc. Is link building sustainable? Should we be link earning plain and simple?

The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.

So here we have Google stating the best way (I appreciate it doesn't say "The only way") to get high quality, relevant links is to create great content. Now should we consider this as this is the way long term, Google intends to focus on? After all, it is there in black and white and it does not say: "The best way to create high-quality relevant links to your website is to outreach to other relevant sites".

I'm sure everyone here understands Google's stance on "Unnatural links" and their implications, do you not think that any link created by any method other than the above could be deemed unnatural? Even if it works right now, are we in danger of becoming dependent on link building only to have the rug pulled from underneath us later (as so many have already found)?

I'd be interested to see the community's thoughts on this... are SEO's putting too much focus on dodging algorithms and not enough focus on sticking as close to the guidelines to ensure their SEO is sustainable?

A lot of people as, "why choose one or the other? why not choose both?" This is why...

I've seen Google drop the penalization hammer on two different websites that engaged in heavy unnatural link building. Fortunately, I wasn't the guy that suggested the link building strategy, but it was my job - as a social-media/content pro - to clean it up. Basically, it means that unnatural link building is out of the question for these types of clients.

If Google has penalized you for unnatural link building, I would say abandon that strategy entirely. I've seen unnatural link building directly contribute to tripling a company's size. In fact, it was the sole factor that allowed them to grow so much, and then Google penalized them. SEO has been a struggle since, and it's not getting any easier. I think Google really analyzes everything we do because we're now on their radar as a past offender.

Needless to say, the companies' search rank went to shit, and can you imagine that they still want to engage in link building a couple years later!? They look at another supposedly successful site, and say, "Hey, they're doing it too. I guess it can still work. Let's try it again."

So that's probably when you'd want to stay away from an unnatural link building strategy and focus on a polished and refined content approach.

The problem why many times SEO professionals switch to Content marketing strategy and found no surprising result for their website. The very true reason behind this they find themselves uncomfortable in social engagement, may be due to they do not get enough time to work in social media world or their mind still stuck with old artificial link building strategy where no genuine work is done mostly like fake Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or other social sites. This is the area where Internet Marketing individuals need to work and believe me it's really awesome genuinely engaging with targeted visitors...........:) Really good for long term. Mission : Make your Mind Social.

Well, in my opinion, Link Building as well Content Marketing both are equally important for a Long Term success. Few years back, it was quite easy to optimize a site just with Link building and off-page process but these days Content Marketing we cant force people to like our content. But on the other hand, it is also true that good and informative content can attract the potential customers, targeted audience at it is really working daily.

Great again... I think that we should not stick to only one strategy. Google can catch you if you are just choosing one land for marketing. Choosing both lands one after other will be really a good choice.

Amazing discussion as always Rand. Love Whiteboard Fridays. I would ask if it is possible to do a little of A and a little of B..? Create awesome Content and use Link Building as a way of helping people find it? Many thanks. :)

By working with small businesses we have learned that the first thing we need to do is to take over the control of their websites to make sure they have the right content and keyword usage (and structured data, canonicalization, etc). From there, we start a heavy link-building strategy to get tangible results fast. Clients are spending money and they need to know if they can trust us.

Once they start to see results (due to our link building efforts) we can now sit down with our clients and educate them on the next phase of their campaigns, more focused in content marketing. This approach has worked very well for us and It's what I suggest for anyone working with eager, impatient small businesses.

I agree this is the pragmatic way to do things.. you really can't justify having multiple meetings honing a content strategy when your client site doesn't have any links built yet, but just link building can't be a long term solution either.

I like hearing Rand say that Moz is not against link building. While they have never said they were, there was a definite feeling. I agree with more with the stance of you don't have to be one or the other. The best strategy for most sites is content building and link building.

The biggest set back is managing expectations. Most clients believe they will rank just because the do SEO. If you are not managing the clients expectations you will fall into the trap of building low quality links just to get the rankings and possibly get the client penalized.

The one good thing about killer content (combined with a link building plan) or if choosing one or the other and choosing to stick with killer content is...killer content attracts links, and people also want to read it...maybe most importantly people want to read it which is why i believe its a great investment. Killer content is how you can seperate yourself from everyone else as well.

There's no doubt to me that given Google's latest guidelines, and there on-going fight against 'un-natural' backlinks, that content marketing is the way forward for long term campaigns. It's all about earning natural links with great content, and promoting it through outreach and social media.

This said, content marketing is expensive when compared to tradiitonal link building, how can you offer this service to clients with limited budgets? One option would be to write weekly blog posts for their blog, but the increase in traffic would be limited.

It certainly is a dilema, one that I have yet to get my head around :(

Insightful stuff as usual, Rand - thanks. I am finding the link building model to be a difficult one to follow when marketing such a niche B2B product/service. It does feel that the algorithmic emphasis on this can be a hindrance to companies like mine. However, taking the content-focused approach certainly works and is working - it just seems to be a somewhat arduous process.

Hi Rand, thanx for a great post covering the areas of content marketing versus link building.

I do believe that there is an awful lot that you have not covered here, but the basics have been touched on. I use a very different concept which I call #FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social media. FUFISM is actually a philosophy where your marketing is done through an integrated approach where each segment of your marketing team has its own place and works on its own functionality, but all of the different segments are integrated into your total marketing package.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is one of the least understood concepts, and some have even declared it to be dead on numerous occasions, saying that this or that technique has replaced SEO. These people obviously have no clue to the term SEO or are just trying to fool the public into taking their "SEO" packages that they are marketing.

In my blog at http://4ubrand.blogpsot.com I define SEO as all the work done by your entire marketing team to ensure that your online content is found by your intended target market when they search the internet. Both content marketing and link building are serious issues within the SEO industry and both need to be done, as well as a host of other things like the new term SMO or Social Media Optimisation, In page SEO, Off page SEO, SEM or search engine marketing and many others.

Once your marketing manager understands the following concepts then things will get a lot easier for your online marketing team, and your SERP's 9Search Engine Results Pages) will bear the fruits in no time at all.

Your marketing needs to be tackled from a FUFISM perspective because of the many different aspects that affect the search patterns and words which your intended target market will use to find your online content. What your intended target market hears on the radio, sees on television, reads in the newspapers, magazines or fliers and is exposed to by billboards as well as other advertising all influence the keywords that are used when they use a search engine.

This means that your online marketing team needs to work as a collective unit, and that each segment of your marketing team needs to understand what influence they have on your SERP's so that they may advise the team on which way to move when they do their individual things, which are then all integrated into one solid properly managed marketing campaign.

Once again thanx for a great post that gets people talking about some of the components of their FUFISM marketing efforts.

in germany we actually have a social dilemma with our clients - we talk about socials and content marketing - and the answer I heard most is: "social media, no way - whats with my privacy - no!"

Facebook and Google actually have some bad NSA press - we have to wait until they forget, normally these type of press is leaving minds in a few month - but actually we better not even say the word facebook - now I read to the end..

Indeed, there are some serious privacy concerns related issues in some EU countries, especially Germany. I think it might take some additional education to get people relaxed on those issues. I know there is a very strong online marketing blogging community in the German-speaking world, so I would suggest you guys work on this side of the things.

we have two sides here - the young people wich post nearly everything on facebook - so the nsa has no need to take a look at them -> they would post, share and like everything.
and than we have these kind of people wich wont even use the whole internet - they need a website - they know that - but they dont take a look at it. The online marketing community is really strong here. we really have to change some meanings here...

Its simply a bit strange - I was called by a client - no joke - someone comes to my site via google images - I dont want that someone can find the images of my site in google!

Why don't we just integrate these two activities in more user/customer friendly way where we can share useful content with our target audience at the same time get a link from that platform? Isn't it more useful?

We've never done any link building for our business. We've been doing very intense Pinterest campaign promoting our site for about 5 months. It seems like Google likes it very much and let us reach first and second position in most of countries around the world. It all depends if you find the right way to do your content marketing - in our case we've found perfect social media channel for us.

To my point of view link building must flow out of the whole content marketing. When I put the link (blog post, comment on forum, link in social media) first of all I think about sharing useful information but not about the weight page will get. With current algorythms "spammy links" which don't share useful information and are not clicked on don't have any weight. So its better to concentrate on increasing brand recognition and the needs of potential cusmoters. Here content marketing wins.

+1 to all the comments (including Rand's) that it's not about one road or the other; in fact the best strategy is to integrate both holistically.

In fact, there is often a delay (some REALLY great content doesn't move at all until it is shared with that one influencer who lights the fire). So in terms of combining these two roads we can think of it as 1) building incredible content, and 2) using link-building techniques to share that content.

Let's remember the value of pyramid/deep link-building to leverage the use of our content by sharing [linking to] it in social channels, link [embed] the rich content to our primary search-targeted pages, maximimizing both roads, AND our success!

Here's a great idea for a post: how to identify which businesses are better targets for link building and which are better suited for content marketing. Yes, potentially all businesses can benefit from content marketing and you can do both, but the budget doesn't always allow for this, and, realistically, it's a lot less productive when you sell ball bearings.

+1 for mentions that it's not one road or the other; further, even GREAT content doesn't immediately get picked up and go viral before hitting critical mass, so link-building skills are a must to 'prime the pump. Let's remember our pyramid here and support our main pages by building deep diverse links to great content that links to great pages and maximize our creative, our linking efforts and our ROI!

I think the main problem that people have with content marketing is the sheer requirement for the company/individual producing the content to write about topics that interest their audience rather than just churn out re-written press releases.

Link building, by it's nature is very linear and logical in terms of its methods and practice, content marketing often requires a creative spark that drives the content strategy in new and engaging directions. Also, many companies tend to lag behind in the topic content trends, infographics have now been done to the point of saturation and unless you have a fantastically innovative idea or opinion it's hard to get a lot of exposure or success out of them.

For me, the question isn't "Content Marketing vs Link Building" but is more often than not "Do you stick to the brand guidelines or are you willing to really stand out in your industry?" If you're willing to gamble and invest in a strategy that risks brand guidelines but will engage with users then the links are, more often than not, going to follow soon after.

Content marketing will always have some aspect of link building, social sharing and other promotional channels otherwise ... if a tree falls in the forest ...

I agree that for smaller businesses with limited online marketing resources that link building will be the primary and in many cases, the only viable tactic, but in these cases, link building should be done in full view of the potential short and long terms business impacts, both positive and negative.

I think we should only avoid the unusual activities. Our primary focus is to get rank and targeted traffic for a website, if we are getting rank by using quality content, quality link building and effective social media activities then we should perform these activities. Why should we choose one option when we can try all of them. We should keep only one poinbt ion our mind that all our activities should be ethical and according to the updated Google Algorithm - that's it, either it is Link building or Social Bookmarking or Content Marketing.

I don´t get it... is it possible to pick one road without needing the other? So Content Marketing, does not build links? or do Link building doesn't need content? How can one of them live without the other?...

And then again, could this strategies work of every niche? of course not, I want to see a content marketing strategy for selling brooms, mops and buckets.

Good luck building a killer content for you newest mop and bucket product and then sharing it in your Facebook.

Actually, that's not too hard. Pinterest users love eye-opening how-to articles about home maintenance and DIY cleaning products, though you may have to stray slightly off topic sometimes. There's a lot of potential... you just have to be creative and know where the audience is.

I am a little late to the party but after watching this I cannot express how much truth is in this whiteboard friday, so much so I stopped my stalker streak just to post. As an Agency we try to focus on both link building and content but in the end we find ourselves leaning back towards the link approach purely because historic data shows us it works.

A key metric to SEO nowadays is having the creativity to shine through a good content and link strategy, with all the Google updates, its only going to become harder to link build. SEO has to evolve.

I'm doing now SEO for two years and I'm always trying to find the middle of both. Is that good or should I focus on one of them? Because I'm much more used to work with content and high qualiity blogs. For me there's always a connection between writing a good blog entry and also put links in there to empower some sites of the homepage I'm working for as a Consulter.

Links are how the web works right? It's just that Google keeps changing the rules, and SEO's have to adapt. Bagging up links Vs. Encouraging others to link back.

If you were selling a product 50 years ago, from a bricks and mortar store, and one Ad agency returned better results than another because they bought Ad spots (think purchased link schemes here) in other stores - then I couldn't see the store owner going with the lower performing agency.

I think it's difficult to separate the two - you have to have some widgets, some information about those widgets for your customers, and you have to do some smart marketing to beat your competitors (i.e. - Coke might not be the best tasting Cola, but they did something right with their marketing for sure)

Content marketing is good for us and if we are good at generating quality content with the best and new innovative ideas it will provide us a great result but I agree with you David that content marketing is a long process to get the return on your investment as compared to the link building. But the thing is content marketing is the most effective way to earn ROI that is hard to get from just the link building approaches. At the end of 2013 I have seen so many companies that earn higher from the content marketing than the link building. No doubt both are good and have their own value.

I mean this with respect, but you don't manage client campaigns or projects anymore - in fact, you haven't in a long time. Neither has Danny Sullivan, or so many of the main proponents of content marketing. Put simply, spending 3 months developing a content marketing strategy, doing content audits, calling customers, hunting down influencers, building a community, conducting surveys and so on is going to fall on extremely deaf ears during a sales pitch, it doesn't fit unless you are talking to a very forward thinking business which is prepared to wait (i.e. VERY few businesses, particularly large corporates with ambitious marketing managers).

It's also all the worse when the vast majority of clients are starting from a profile of nothing - they have no brand awareness, visibility, community or, well, anything. Even large brands can start campaigns with brand new sites and managing internal relationships between the two sites so one can piggy back on the visibility acquired by the other, is challenging.

Clients couldn't care - they've been subjected to the barrage of messages that search is relatively simple to manipulate providing you hire the right "gooorooo", and if they haven't spoken to him or her yet, they will do when he or she cold calls them, pointing out non-existing flaws in our marketing strategy and assuring them results can be acquired in a far shorter timeframe. THIS is the real world, where money talks and idealistic notions fall flat on their ass.

I think what is heartening is the fact that Moz now appears to be accepting the commercial and scalability argument behind content marketing, something it has remained detached from in recent months. However, I would also argue that a lot of what is contained in the video, doesn't fit with real world application.

I think Rand has mischaracterized the links vs. content split. It isn't link building vs. content marketing. It should be Search Marketing (where link building is a tactic) vs. Content Marketing. Content marketing is driving prospects to the content who then find their way to the target site.

With Matt Cutts discouraging content marketing and guest blogging for the sake of inbound links, how does this affect the goals of a content marketing plan? And with web publishers leary of providing follow links for external content, Do these new link guidelines limit content marketing to brand awareness and consumer influence only?

i have no problem with content marketing except that when a client only pays for a day a month, by the time ive done the research and written the document it doesnt leave a lot of time for outreach on the gamble that i might gain some exposure. whereas with link building you know im gonna get 20 links. if we get bigger clients (and we are) then im definitelty going to work through content marketing backed by link building.

Great info Rand.. Actually we had a discussion like this before. We concluded as content marketing approach is the best for our business. Basically We are into long run. We need a long term results and also we need leads for long term. More over we are one of the Victim of penguin update.. So we decided, content marketing approach is more suitable for us.. It worked well also..

Just catching up with my whiteboard Fridays....I wrote a blog on this topic July 22, and went so far to say that the term "link building" may become obsolete.....I lean towards the integration of the two...where the links are to your own created content (Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus) that can engage people, inform them, link your authority to Google for Author rank, and still get the link juice in most cases (even no follow links have some value). At the same time I also do pure link building for clients on free directories that have high domain authority. It's a good topic and I really like your open approach to remind us all to be flexible with our methods to optimize our results based on Google's guidelines. Content creation is time consuming when you have to write blogs for business owner clients who are too busy to do anything on the web. I have noted that the traffic to the blogs/ content is sometimes even higher than to their web site. I use blogger and like the fact that the blogs and content stack with archives so that there is an ever increasing amount of "link juice" from the same high domain authority site that gets fresh updates with new content. This is an example of building quality links (with content) instead of a quantity of links without content. If we can do both then our white hats may have an extra gold star.

Interesting video/post. I think to become supremely successful with an SEO program it'll take a bit of both tactics. Obviously, you'll need to explore possible linking opps, attain them, and move up in rankings, but it's also important to create awesome content, and push it out there for all to read. Any SEO that's only doing one of these tactics is definitely missing out on some great opportunities.

Great Discussion Rand. I agree that it can be difficult to get a buy in for content marketing, when your company is so focused on just moving the ranking meter. I have found though that the brand and overall perception of the company increases as you put Great content or resources out on the web. It may take longer, but it will also last longer.

Content marketing is great great great.I write great 3 times because its really great and I have tested it several times.Link building/content marketing mix is always good but my question to all folks is that many clients I see ask us to rank their site with few product/landing pages with few targeted keywords.We do not have the option to create blog or content for them than the only option that i think we can stay alive is linkbuilding we can not even earn links but building great content.

I don´t get it... is it possible to pick one road without needing the other? So Content Marketing, does not build links? or do Link building doesn't need content? How can one of them live without the other?...

Hi Rand - This is an interesting WBF because I've had the same dilemma with my own business. I'm glad you addressed this topic.

I've been getting the impression from Moz lately that content marketing is the only "correct" way to build traffic. I remember another WBF called "No, Content is Not the Only Way" but in general, even white-hat link building seems to be frowned upon here. I understand the long-term value of content marketing, but I think young businesses may need to do some link building to get noticed.

I started my business pretty recently. I have very few inbound links and low domain authority. I also don't have a lot of social followers. I could create the most wonderful content, but without a decent inbound link profile, nobody will know it exists. Google won't display my content unless I have a respectable domain authority already.

Honestly, even though I think content production and marketing is important long-term, I feel like link building is a greater necessity in the beginning. Once somebody knows I exist then I can shift focus to the content marketing side. If I don't do the link building first, content production is an empty pursuit. What are your thoughts?

Rand, your today's WBF put my strategy in order. Up to this moment me and my team have been right in the middle of this crossroads. Now that you have clearly outlineds both paths I can put it in order in my head and focus more on goals and on the way that works better for my team. Thank you.

Currently, we've had to switch gears toward more of content marketing to gain traffic and brand awareness.

This choice is because the client is in a tough vertical to play in. Going against DA 70 plus, is going to be a long run on the treadmill and I may be out of a job when I can't get my client on that first page of the SERP.

Content marketing has helped with meeting the client's business goals.

It's not to say that we've completely abandoned the Link building approach, this has been less of an emphasis, but the tactic of Outreach for b2b development has been huge. So that's how we've been getting links along with the content marketing which is the social animal that we're taming for results.

The bigger question from the link building/content creation debate is what we are measuring in the first place. We have trained our clients to look at our actions (how many links built), or visible measures (where they sit on the first page on Google). These measures are similar to a call centre tracking how many calls were answered and how fast they were answered. All perfectly lovely measures - except they don't mean anything.

What really matters is the end result. With call centres - Were the problems resolved in a way that the customer wanted? With all of our link/content actions - Did our clients see a rise in qualified clients knocking on their doors?

There's no point in being on the first page of Google if our client doesn't have this converted into qualified leads for their business (And that's not even beginning to go to the issue that we are moving into a world where there will be no consistent page 1s of Google - which makes that measure even more invalid).

We need to help our clients understand measures of our actions are irrelevant - and that the only measures that matter are the results they see in their business. How we get them the results in a sustainable way will mean a combination of link building & fabulous clickable content creation that builds credibility in the eyes of their community. We have sold our old transaction measures well to our clients - we now need to start to sell a new message.

At the end of the day the bottom line is SEOs can't be robots/monkeys because you can "go through the motions" regardless of which one you choose. So whether you choose LBL, CML or both we need to think like marketers. Each client and situation is going to need something different to see value. The first challenge is to figure out what that is and the second is to execute it.

Great WBF comparing Link Building vs. Content Marketing! Understanding the differences between the 2 is important as well as crossover between the 2 "lands". I see that Content Marketing would take even longer to see a ROI and many clients demand results sooner than later.

It's a really interesting one, and I think it's very much a case of "in an ideal world". eCommerce for example is often a different kettle of fish, where content is much harder to come by - and especially to relate to the products. B2B is very different to B2C, and if you're selling something like floor tiles - it's easy to say "create great content" but in reality, that might just be having a page which shows you the biggest range.

Why do you say "content is much harder to come by" in ecommerce? Coming from a background of ecommerce I've seen plenty of opportunities for enhancing product descriptions yet many retailers (and especially wholesalers) simply don't put in the much needed effort.

But, as you mentioned, in the case of either extremely boring products or having multiple (hundreds, if not thousands of) variations of the same exact product (like floor tiles) I can see the challenge here since you want to avoid duplicate content (how many different ways can you describe an eggshell colored floor tile with a blue flower motif?).

I would think you could at least increase the number of pictures you have and ensure you use the proper tags, have a short video of your "floor tiling expert" showing what would be a good match for this tile pattern when it comes to whatever the heck people match it up with, or videos of how to correctly do-it-yourself, before and after videos, how to properly dispose of old tiles, etc.

Because in comparison to something like a product (lets just say Moz) where you can constantly be talking about relevant info on the topic and at the same time sell your product, it is. The same with most digital products, where it's all related.

It varies greatly depending on the product and I certainly agree that having custom descriptions, reviews, help videos, product specs is awesome and should be done. Having said that, if you've got a catalogue of 40,000 products it becomes far more challenging. For example, if I worked for Play.com on SEO. They sell everything from TV's through to washing machines, games and everything inbetween. Creating unique content for all of it (that isn't ripped from the manufacturer and on every other site) is much, much harder.

Imagine having to write the descriptions for the eggshell coloured floor tile :P

I agree that content should be a driving factor as we want to please people first, which in turn creates shares etc. this should send a signal to the search engines. Then when you have enough content embark on Link building. That is the way I view it. Mix it up...Right?

I'm surprised to see Moz and so many still talking about link building. I've always done both in the PAST because content marketing is a slower process and link building GAVE fast results in the PAST. You have to really raise the bar with the level of content to get any traction. This year I have tapered way off on link building unnatural links to a complete STOP. It's better to not chance jeopardizing a clients site in the long run over short term gains. If you know the link is going to be there beforehand by having the link placed it is an unnatural link. That kind of link building is considered a link building scheme and be very careful with link building schemes. They ultimately can be more harmful than helpful. Read Google's latest position on link schemes https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356

For me - when I say "Link Building" it is for now more a bit of "link earning" - but I am working on it - on earning - so I still call it link building. I think I am not the only one - why give a thing another name - just for explaining - link earning allways was one of my link building strategies. I cant split it now.

I agree with those who have said that both should be considered. I come from the enterprise SEO world and not the consultant side so I might have a different perspective. There are parts of your website that you can not be creative with and the content on it is not necessarily link worthy but to a very small audience. So I say we should look at link building for those sections as well as the great content pieces as well...to build a base if you will. And then build in content marketing to be another part of your SEO strategy. For those who are more short term focused, then it might be a smaller part of the puzzle but for those who are long term or as Rand said, multi-channel, then you should more heavily weight the content marketing piece. And don't forget to throw in some link building techniques in with your content marketing efforts to make it more powerful.

Content marketing is much harder and it takes time, patience and a good amount of skill so I can understand why some want to avoid it. But it should be a part of all white-hat, long term SEO efforts.

I haven't commented on a post in a long time. I like this WBF because it discusses two approaches. Both are good, but the "Content Marketing Land" example is a lot more in depth. Whether using one over the other, I believe it's imperative to make friends with many of the webmasters linking back to you so that in the future you can get another link form the same site.

Both examples are time consuming. I use BuzzStream to help scale the link building process.

Why would you have to "pick" a road? You should have already picked a holistic marketing road. This includes pull & push marketing feeding each other. It includes a product/service that is somewhat remarkable. It includes running your marketing & business like a machine.

If you hope to last in search if you are focusing just on getting a killer link or finding that super link source you will be just as sorry as you would just by creating content and hoping that the wheel moves.

I think a lot of people like to add the word "versus" on even the smallest of things when adding one doesn't really make sense.

Just like in this case… I think SEO and quality content looks awesome together and it creates a synergistic result to your marketing efforts. Even with that, others still think the two are totally different species to the point where they cannot or should not be mixed.

Am a regular visitor to MOZ and thanks for an another wonderful whiteboard Friday. This video is very much helpful for our clients more of our clients are thinking about the no of links that we had submitted in a month but they really not understand the content optimization in their sites after they saw your session now they start releasing the importance of the content marketing. Once again thank you for this wonderful video regards link building vs content marketing :)

I'm not embarrassed to say that I just gave you a standing ovation in my office. :)

I love how you presented both sides and showed that it's a BUSINESS DECISION. Thank you for the great resource to share with my clients. This will help reinforce the things that we explain on a daily basis.

Great post and great discussion. As mentioned, I think that because of the Penguin changes, content marketing is the goal, but the reality is that lots of clients don't have the time, $, patience to wait for eventual results. The problem is that with Content Marketing, you're just hoping it will work. Link building gives you the type of predictability effects clients are after. It would be very hard to sell Content Marketing to a client if you have not shown them results with Link building first. So, in my opinion, today, you may have to split your budget: 80% link building vs. 20% content marketing, knowing full well that this split up will increase in favour of content marketing over time and you need to prepare for it.

Like many, it may be best to invest in both. In my opinion, link building is a short term fix with a short shelf life. It appears as though this strategy may not have a long term existence. However, as you mentioned in this video, there are certain fields or categories that do not benefit greatly from content marketing, but do well with link building. So, if it works (for now), continue this path. However, in our experience (www.heartwaves.org and www.blinkjarmedia.com), content marketing is the best choice for us. Thoughts??

Hi Rand. You've had a lot of flak recently from link builders and very negative comments with your push towards content marketing and a lot of people saying your leading newbies down the wrong path (I still see myself as one of them). I think in this wbf you've done really well to address them, and I'm really pleased I took the time to watch this video. You've earned back the respect I was starting to lose after reading haters comments.

Thanks for a great Whiteboard Friday (as always!). I find that recently that a crossover of both of these methods more and more. Its not really either or but as you mention what situation suits which, most of the time for me its a bit of both.

From my experience of working with over hundred of clients worldwide, it's really hard to impress your clients with a spreadsheet full of links if the rankings or traffic are not really moving up. Links are not measurable results for many clients that usually disregard how hard it is to acquire them. However, they are quite impressed with content creation and see value in the process. They would rather pay more for the content and less for link building bless it shows results. If you asked them to pay you for relationship building, their answer would most certainly be negative.

I've been doing internet marketing professionally for 2 years now and have spent a fair share of time in each of these lands. My first year I focused more on link building land and got some results. In my second year I switched my focus over to content marketing land and achieved way better results. Of course I still focus on the technical aspects of link building but I build all my campaigns around content marketing. I get more results that way and so do my clients. Another bonus to this is I experience less negative affects from Google updates.

(the comment system is broken cos i posted this comment before, came back in to edit some spelling errors and then the submit did not take. I refreshed the browser and the comment was gone)

Thank you for a wonderfully time-contextual whiteboard friday video.

I just want to say that on the link-building side we have had good success with just online business directories for one or two clients. It may be a "digital business culture" in those markets, but it was successful nonetheless.

From where I stand I see that you can actually do content marketing and attain some of the results you normally would had you done link building only. The reverse is not possible though, and therefore I have a rather strong bias toward content marketing.

Having said that, I think that if money and other resources permit, a mix of the two could yield potent results for any business who is serious about their digital wellbeing.

Great Friday vid as usual. Great time-contextual topic too. I have question: "How can one embed this video as part of a post on ones own blog or will there be a Youtube version available at some point?

I think that one can get very involved in "content marketing land" and actually attain some of the results one would if one had gone after the activities of "link building land", but cannot get the results of content marketing through just doing link-building. Perhaps not to same degree as if one had put all your effort into link-building, but there is a definite spill-over.

With sufficient resources I think SEOs should look at a bit of both. We have had great results in South Africa for local brands with just directory listings. BUt that may be a "digital business culture" thing in that one particular market.

Again.. great time-contextual topic. Keep doing what you do. you and your team at MOZ are appreciated.

Here I try to put my 2 cents in discussion : depends on industry/team/budget... Of course if a company has a PR service producing news and press releases this seems quite easy to implement but when an SMB has a webmaster who's at same time SEO/Content producer/Marketing chief it's hard to figure out how this can work ! So yes Rand I'm totally with you as I've experienced both strategies with my clients and would say definitly it's a Board decision (when well explained as you do in this video).

Rand - loved your comment about skill sets. The differences between a quality seo/linkbuilder versus a content marketing specialist can be huge. Would you recommend that professionals in this field move more into an "inbound skill set" by widening our skills or build a team with individuals with skills in the two seprate areas?

I think the mix between both is fantastic! I produce some great content then link build to it, so it actually offers something to the user (Which will more than likely convert more sales than a crap piece of content) but at the same time get it to the top for the keyword/s I'm targetting so it gets me traffic (and eventually sales).

I think you need to have a healthy amount of both if you want to really earn that long-term success. Traditional link building is something you can control (at least you can put the wheels in motion to get that link, even if it's ultimately up to someone else to give it to you). You can make small progress every day. But with content marketing you can't force people to link to your content, that has to happen naturally overtime. will you earn those links? Most definitely! But they come in time and it could mean a lot of content and a lot of waiting before you get that point.

I am completely agree with you, there is no need to decide between link building and content marketing. Using both in a planned way has given us very good results, not only in good ranking in SERP but it has also helped building the awareness about the Brand.

Thanks for wonderful WBF! It was actually a dilemma. So far, I believe and understood that today its Linking Building and Content Marketing later on, in upcoming years or may be very soon there will be new term "XYZ". All these things are designed and has be implied just keeping three basic things in mind UI, UX and UE (User Expectations), through which our client can get benefit in their business and obviously it will be helpful to us also to perform better & valuable marketing. As per the time, terms, expectations, and experience gets upgraded/changes with which SME or we professionals also have to cop up simultaneously with new ways and ideas but that doesn't mean we can completely skip old techniques.

I still remember my derivation sums in high school mathematics. I use to love derivatives, same way I do believe that old methodology gets derived and new things get added to it that's it. Ultimate result we want is to meet up our client's expectations and users expectations.

If in any way I misunderstood this concept, folks can guide and correct me. :)